"Depart from That Retired Circle": Women’s Support of the Greek War for Independence and Antebellum Reform

The Greek War for Independence generated continuous charitable mobilization by women throughout the United States for almost a decade. Inspired by the beneficence movement, elite and middle class women from countless benevolent, social, and religious groups of the 1820s organized efforts to provide support for the Greek army and civilians. This popular movement extended benevolent interests in humanitarian and religious purposes, explicitly asking women to enter an international stage of relief and reform. Women devoted themselves to the aid of Greek women and children especially, articulating that the legacy of ancient Greek democracy could be revived if the Greeks defeated the despotic Ottoman Empire. Two decades after the conclusion of the Greek Revolution, Hiram Powers’s famous nude statue, The Greek Slave, arrived in the United States, not only generating intense debate over its subject matter, but also reviving the Greek Revolution in conversation as antebellum reformers compared their own nation’s shortcomings with those of the Ottoman Empire. The Greek cause ultimately made an important impression on the reform groups that matured in the years that followed, contributing an important element to reformist rhetoric in antebellum  America. [Abstract from author]